little sweet pea

So much to be thankful for

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone had a relaxing and peaceful day.  And if you were really lucky, a little snuggle time with your favorite big cousin.

Sleepy head

Sylvie has always been an amazing sleeper.  She's gone through rough patches and we've had our (small) share of sleepless nights, but John and I always give a little thanks for how well Sylvie sleeps.  She goes down without a peep for every nap and bedtime and always wakes up happy as can be.  Her crib is in our room and each morning when she wakes up she calls out to me, and as soon as I sit up and look over at her she starts waving and clapping and giggling for me to come over.  During her naps, when I'm not in the room, she'll typically wake up and occupy herself for a good 30 minutes or more.  I love sitting downstairs every afternoon just listening to her babble away on the monitor.   It's really pretty ridiculously cute.

So last week she went through this phase where she was taking really long morning naps.  So long that on a few occasions I actually had to wake her up so we could get to work on time.  She's not the biggest fan of being woken up, and will put up a little fight for about 3 seconds.  After which time she immediately realizes that hey!  It's time to wake up!  And play!  With mommy!  Whee!!! 

I took some pictures the other day to show John just how cute it is.  These 4 photos were taken one right after the other and over the course of about 1 minute.  From sleepy and pissed to curious and giddy in the span of 60 seconds.  What a sweetie pie.

Look who's back

I am so glad I didn't come out and post about my plans to try NaBloWriMo.  Heh, that would have been embarrassing.  I'm really sorry for the delay in posting, but I'm just going to get down to business and do some catch up work.  I have lots of photos and some cute videos I need to post.  But first things first, I'm taking down the password protection.  I know it was a big pain in the ass and I'm glad to be done with it for now.  After witnessing some privacy violations and just general crappy online behavior directed at the children of some friends, I decided to just take a step back and make sure I was sufficiently protecting Sylvie and our family.   I'm feeling better about it now, so thanks for sticking it out with me!

Here's my new favorite picture of my two favorite people.  Life is good.

Happy Halloween!

Farmer Syl

Not a lot of time to post today, but I just wanted to put up some pictures from this weekend's trip to Terhune Orchards.  We had a blast and I'm hoping to go back again this weekend.  Sylvie loved it too - check her out on the kid size tractor.  We thought she might be a little nervous when we plopped her down on it, but she LOVED it! 

She was a little less enthused by the wooden cow.  (Notice the actual working udders.  Cool or creepy?  I haven't decided.)

And here she is lounging in the big red wagon, holding a piece of garbage left behind by the previous riders.  She would not let us take it away from her without a screaming match.....so we gave in and just let her keep it. 

Humiliation

I used to be a really modest person before having Sylvie.  I still am, in a lot of ways, but for the most part there just realistically isn't much room for it.  Sylvie joins me for every bathroom trip.  Every one.  Sometimes she likes to peer into the bowl too, which I know is really pretty gross, but what can I do?  She also sees me getting dressed each day and sometimes hangs out in the bathroom while I shower.  The modesty is gone.  So I was honestly pretty surprised the other day to learn that I still had a sliver of it left, an area of pride that hadn't been crushed yet.  It was around 6:30 in the morning, John had left for work and I was desperately trying to get Sylvie back to sleep.  But she just wasn't in the mood so she was wriggling around the bed, crawling on and over me, playing with my hair, etc.  I was really tired and pretty out of it when I suddenly felt her little fingers exploring my face.  She's recently perfected her pincer grasp and can now grab even the tiniest object she sets her eyes on.  And her discovery that morning?  A nice new blemish on my chin.  That she HAD TO HAVE.  She was so curious and sincere in her interest, I spent the first couple of minutes just watching the determination in her face while she tried to figure out why it wasn't coming off.  And then the humiliation just hit me like a ton of bricks.  My sweet beautiful angelic little child is sitting here picking my zits.  OMG.

duh!

So I think Sylvie spoke her first word on Friday.  It just so happens that I had been spending lots of time in the previous days reading about language development and reading the anecdotes of other babies' first words, so I was really skeptical at first, thinking that maybe I willed myself into hearing it.  But she's since repeated it many many times and in front of other people!  So it's official, I'm recording it here.  Sylvie now says "duh," translation: duck.  The baby speaks!!

I really didn't think duck would be her first word, although maybe it makes sense since her absolute favorite sound to make, since 4 and a half months of age, is dada.  She's had almost 5 months to get proficient at that d sound, so I guess it's not too far fetched afterall.  But it's not like she has a lot of duck toys, or even one favorite duck toy that she plays with all the time.  We don't really talk about ducks that often, except for the occasional "a duck says quack quack" type of thing.  She used to play with 2 rubber duckies every night in her bath, but after our move misplaced them we never got around to getting her new ones.  So last week while I was cleaning through some stuff I found one of the rubber ducks.  I put it with Sylvie's toys and over the course of a few days we were playing with it quite a bit.  We played hide and seek with the duck, peek a boo with the duck, the duck gave Sylvie kisses, etc.  So on Friday I asked her where the duck was, to see if she #1 understood me and #2 could actually go retrieve it from the drawer of toys.  Not only did she immediately prove a resounding yes to both things, but she grabbed it, looked at me and simply said "duh".  !!!! 

The best part about this being her first word is that it gives me an excuse to post this picture of Sylvie, which is one of my all-time favorite pictures of her.  She was 4 and a half months old and playing in the tub with the now famous duh.

So big!

Sylvie's having fun with her new party trick.  She's even trying out some theatrical one arm techniques:

I never said she wasn't a drama queen.

9 Months!

Today was Sylvie's 9 month birthday.  I really can't express how crazy this is to me, that my little baby is already 9 months old.  These days her personality is just exploding...she's affectionate and goofy, she's so smart and interested in the world around her.  She loves playing peek-a-boo.  She really loves music, we find her dancing and bopping her head ALL the time.  She loves books and will crawl into my lap as soon as she sees me pull one out.  She loves playing the piano and she especially loves playing the drums.  Her new favorite past time is pulling clothes out of drawers, which is why I can almost always be found re-folding piles and piles of baby clothes.  She's mastering finger foods and really enjoys textures of all kinds, especially grass and dead leaves (which she seems to think are more finger foods, yum).  Sylvie loves to kiss her mommy and pictures of babies.  She can wave hello and goodbye and has just started to respond to the question "how big is Sylvie?" by throwing her arms up in the air SO BIG.

I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but this is really just an amazing time in our lives.  I love you more than I ever thought possible Sylvie, you have made this world a brighter, sweeter, and more meaningful place than I ever imagined.  Your giggles and kisses make me melt and there are nights I have to restrain myself from waking you up just so I can snuggle some more with you.  You are the most beautiful thing in my life!  xoxo

Happy days

I'm sorry I haven't been blogging as much lately.  Sorry to all of Sylvie's adoring fans (wink), but mostly just sorry that I'm not documenting everything that's happening these days.  The reason I haven't been blogging as much is just simply because we're so busy keeping up with this kid.  This 8 and half months old business is without a doubt the best thing I've ever experienced.  Sylvie is so much fun, so interactive and playful and interested in everything around her.  And like a good little mama's girl she's becoming more intentionally cuddly too...every night before she goes to bed she crawls into my lap and lays her head down on my shoulder and just rests for a few moments.  It's my favorite time of the day.

This weekend we took Syl to a pumpkin farm for the mandatory baby-in-pumpkin-patch pictures.  But the sun was waaaaay to bright and it was unseasonably warm out and it just wasn't hitting the spot for any of us.  Even the field pumpkins looked a little squashed and brown and not in the mood for a photo op.   Poor Syl needed some sunglasses!

So we found a decent spot and some pretty pumpkins by the farm store of all places, and with some creative cropping you'd almost think she was blissfully lounging in a field of beautiful pumpkins, eh?  Who needs the real thing when you can stage a pretty picture.

To kill some time after the somewhat disappointing pumpkin outing we hit the local state park.  There were tons of kids playing and we discovered a little toddler play area.  We plopped Sylvie down and watched her crawl through the tunnel, play with the fun house mirror, play in the dirt, and of course attempt to eat some rocks. 

It was such a fun afternoon, I think the most fun I've ever had with Sylvie.  Just being able to watch her explore and interact with the world around her.  She was so excited and eager to experience everything, the feel of the dirt in her hands absolutely fascinated her.  The sand on the mirror ledge kept her entertained for minutes.  Looking at the leaves and the kids running around, the ducks and the pond, she just didn't want to miss a thing.  It was incredible. 

I've been thinking a lot about this weekend, and I can't imagine how my life could be any happier right now.  And I couldn't possibly sum it up any better than this post from mamapie, a friend from one of my online mama communities.  Her words articulate exactly what I'm feeling right now...just loving every moment with Sylvie and wishing so much that I could freeze this time with her, to preserve exactly how she looks, acts, plays, babbles, kisses, claps hands, etc. But the realization that what makes this time so special is how fleeting it is.  It's absolutely bittersweet.